Jeremiah 32:14,15; I Timothy 6: 18,19

The future inside the present

After Lyndon Johnson signed the voting rights bill, something strange happened.  During the summer the ghettoes of America’s big cities exploded in violence.   Johnson took it personally. Why was this happening? He had made more progress in racial equality than all presidents excluding Abraham Lincoln.  It was a personal affront to him.  It was as if the nation had woken up out of a slumber of complacency about race.

What is going on in today’s cities, seems similar but it isn’t or is it.  With an African American president much of the nation was in a kind of illusion that racism was almost gone in America.  But as the evil it is in popped up in strange places, including in some of the nation’s police departments.  What makes this year different is that people are recording what happens.  So the cities are once again in turmoil.

Friends, perhaps the answer to Johnson’s question about why this was happening is that the past is always a part of the present.   The present carries traces of the past.  America is what it is because of its history and we never fully seem to deal with our history.  So it keeps coming back to haunt us.  This is not just true of our society, but of you and I also.  The fact that we have iron in our blood is very likely a remnant of the iron in the earth we emerged from.  So physically we carry traces of a distant past.  But the way we behave is also   It is also true of our values and In Jeremiah the people face the consequences of the past.  Things look bleak.  The past has poisoned the present.   How do you live in the present in a country that has no hope?  In our day and age we could ask: how do you live in Aleppo, in Syria, and see anything but smoke?  That is one lesson here, friends, we must deal with the past or it will haunt the present in our lives.

Yet at the same time, we must live in the present. We have to deal with the past, but we cannot live in it.  That’s just not healthy.  And as the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vazquez says: “the past in unreliable, because our memory is unreliable.” (NPR September 2016).  We also cannot live in the future, for we would be a ball of anxiety and worry.  Yet 1Timothy tells us we must lay “a foundation for the future.”  We do so by trying to be good.  Then the text goes on to say:”so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

In other words living in the present must be real and worthwhile and meaningful, a life of engagement with others.   But inside the present we must live, lie the seeds of the future.

I have just told you about the visit of Indonesian health care workers. I told you how important it is to take a remnant of what was built in the past, strengthen in the present so that the depth of knowledge and quality of care will go up in the future.

Friends, as a congregation we too must live in the present.   As a congregation we too have to recognize the past and lay a foundation for the future, but we have to live in the present, living “a life that  really is life.”  It is a delicate balancing act isn’t it: dealing with the past, living the present and laying a foundation for the future?  Yet we must do all of them.  I think we do that pretty well however.

We could decide to live in the past, to think of a time in the fifties when churches were full and located in the center of society. Now we are more at the fringes.  We could decide to live in the future, thinking about our life without a parking lot and wonder what that will mean for the decades to come. But we are not doing that. I believe we are living in the present, for that is the only place we can live.

Nevertheless, sometimes the future needs a little push.  That was the point of the Indonesian  program.  The future does not come by itself or at least not in the shape we like it to come.  This is why we have our residency program, as a way of shaping and trying out the future, bringing in new personalities, new perspectives, new ways of serving God and new energy.   In Jeremiah a deed is purchased and put in a pot.  Land will be bought and sold. It is a promise that it is right to invest in the future.

For us personally the same questions are valid.  Are you living in the past instead of dealing with it?  Are you just existing in the present or are you fully living it? Are you pushing the future, to see where it might take you?  Do you have a dream in an earthen pot or have you given up on dreams altogether?  What is the task ahead of you for which you are laying the foundation today?  Only you can answer that question.   But let us be reminded that God’s grace guarantees us that the One of days goes by is with us now and will be in the days to come.  Thanks be to God!